


Wholly to Mercy

by Rahmi



Category: Havemercy Series - Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett, Supernatural
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Dragons, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-18 00:07:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15473109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rahmi/pseuds/Rahmi
Summary: Their mom died in a fire on the Mollyedge when Sam was a baby. It's pretty fucking common, is what it is, and Dean's always just counted himself lucky that he got Sam out, but Dad. Dad went batshit insane after that.





	1. Then

**Author's Note:**

> So a long ass time ago, when Supernatural was still in its infancy, I read the Havemercy books and laughed. See, Havemercy reads like Supernatural fic with the numbers filed off, so for some reason I... engraved the numbers back on? IDEK.
> 
> It's perpetually unfinished but it's 20k of early Supernatural based brothers and weirdness so here you go.

_Some When_

Their mom died in a fire on the Mollyedge when Sam was a baby. It's pretty fucking common, is what it is, and Dean's always just counted himself lucky that he got Sam out, but Dad. Dad went batshit insane after that.

We're talking bucketfuls of crazy. Dean kind of cringes his shoulders anytime he thinks it, but it's freakin' true.

Dad's always insisted that Mom burning was a Ke-Han plot.

Mom'd had Ke Han blood in there somewhere, sure, enough nobility that Sam ended up with a small Talent that they kept hidden for years, but you couldn't really tell. The closest tell between either of them is that Sam's a little taller than Thremedon average, but most people don't look that close, even when you get up to Miranda or Charlotte.

Dean loves his Dad, but he's always thought that the idea of the friggin' Ke-Han breaking into Thremedon just to burn down Molly to get at one Mollyrat family is really freakin' ludicrous.

So he's understandably shamefaced right about now.

* * *

_Then_

Sam gets into 'Versity two days before his brother should come home and say, "Dude, have you seen my freakin' knife? Dad's gonna kick my ass if I've lost it." He always thought it would be kind of a big deal, even if that's stupid because Dean and Dad don't understand... well, anything about him.

He wasn't expecting Dad to take one look at his acceptance letter and say, "Why the hell have you been wasting your time with that?" like Sam's slacked off when it was his turn to go out and find food.

He didn't. He hasn't. He's pulled as much of his own weight as Dean and Dad'll let him. He studies in his free time, at night, when he's supposed to be sleeping. He sneaks into the Ke-Han district of Molly for a month to practice his diction and his grammar while he's shopping; he comes home with a busted lip twice, but Dean just shakes his head and ruffles his hair and that's that.

He didn't slack off. He just did better than Dean.

Dean's the hero, though. Dean's the one Dad claps on the shoulder with a grin and Dean's the one that people congratulate on the street.

Sam knows that tons of people get into the 'Versity every year. He's a Mollyedge rat with Ke-Han blood, though, and he's insulted that nobody even cares. He worked his ass off and the best he gets is Dean's half-hearted, "That's cool, Sammy, but you know you can't go, right? How're you even gonna pay for all that shit? You know 'Versity brats are stuck up bitches anyway."

"I got a scholarship," Sam says, swallowing hard. His fists are shaking like he's getting ready to punch Dean in the fucking face. He's done something that nobody else in their circle of friends has even thought about. He's getting out, he's going to do better, and nobody even cares. "They're going to pay for my books and I can stay in the dorms."

"Or," Dean says, "You can stay here and not bother with learning all of those pansy ass manners and shit. Dude, Sammy, why would you even want to go there? They make you study, man."

"It's Sam," Sam mutters rebelliously and, "I like studying, Dean. I want to learn things. I don't want to be stuck here for the rest of my life, okay?"

Dean's eyebrows rise. "Because your life is so hard, man," he says, shaking his head.

"It's not about it being hard, Dean," Sam says, "It's about it being better. I can go to 'Versity and learn something, be somebody. I don't have to live in Molly for the rest of my life just scraping by."

"So, what," Dean says and there's finally something else in his eyes besides tolerant amusement, "It's good enough for me and Dad, but not for you, is that what you're saying, Sammy?"

Sam swallows hard and cuts his eyes down to his feet. There's a hole in one of his boots big enough for his little toe to peak out, so he wriggles that instead of staring at Dean. "Dad's not even home anymore, Dean," he says lowly, "He's always in the Hunter's Quarters. Why should we have to live down here when he doesn't?"

"Dad's risking his life to save spoiled brats like you, kiddo," Dean says. He reaches out and ruffles Sam's hair like he's twelve instead of seventeen. "Cut him some slack, Sammy. What's he going to think when he comes back and finds out that you've wasted time learning freakin' Ke-Han?"

"He's not even going to care," Sam says, but that's not true and Dean just has to cock his head and grimace to correct him. "Mom was part Ke-Han," Sam says finally.

He doesn't have any memories of their mother; she'd died in his room, sure, but he'd been all of six months old at the time. He wouldn't even know that she was foreign if Dean hadn't mentioned it one day, out of the blue, when Sam was nine.

Sam thinks that Dad's never quite forgiven him for being the reason that Mom died. She'd been in his room when the fire started and she'd been the first thing to burn. When Dad gets really drunk, he'll start talking about how she hadn't even had time to scream before she was just a flash fried skeleton.

Of course, to hear Dad tell it, she also died pinned to the ceiling with a Ke-Han magician standing under her, so Sam's not sure how much there is to believe in that.

"Mom was a refugee," Dean says firmly. "She wasn't one of those bastards."

Sam slants a look his way. "You're going to lose your favorite knife in some whore's bed tomorrow," he says softly.

Dean grimaces. "You know I hate when you do that."

"Doesn't change that I can, Dean," Sam says.

"Yeah, well, you could have gotten it from Dad's side," says Dean, "You don't know."

"Because he won't say anything about it!" Sam explodes.

"Sam," Dean says warningly.

Sam runs a hand through his hair and blows out a breath. "They can teach me how to use it, Dean," he says softly. "I can learn how to be something other than an Airman's kid or a Mollyrat. I can help people. I can--"

"You can be drafted into that goddamn spook house like all the other kids with Talents in the last couple of years," Dean snaps. "Man, you know this. It's not safe for you to be up there. Th'Esar's been collecting kids like you like it's going out of style. You can't get anywhere near him."

"I'm going, Dean," Sam says.

His brother scrubs his face with one hand. "Dad's not going to let you go," he says softly.

"Dad can bite me," Sam returns.

"You never do anything the easy way, do you Sammy?"

"It's Sam."

"You know I'm right," says Dean.

Sam shrugs. He's got an out and he's not going to let anything stop him. Not Dad, not the rest of the Hunters, not Dean. He's going to do something with his freaking life even if everyone else around him is content to do the same damn thing until the day they die.

* * *

Of course, it's easy to be brave when Dad's not around. Sam keeps his mouth shut when Dad comes home to collar Dean and him with soot-stained hands and say, "Alright, boys, I'm gonna show you something special."

"New girl finally come in?" his brother asks. Dean's practically vibrating next to Sam.

"She's a beauty," Dad confirms.

Sam has no interest whatsoever in the stupid dragons, other than the fact that they keep the Ke-Han from slaughtering them all, but Dad still drags him along to the Quarter's anyway.

The other Hunters offer absent greetings when they tromp through the main room. Bobby slants Sam a smile from under his hat and Sam finds himself smiling back; Bobby's the second person he told, right before Dean, and he'd just clapped Sam on the shoulder and said, "Knew you could do it, boy. Congratulations."

It'd felt good, so Sam rides that high instead of fuming about having to follow Dad and Dean down into the dragon's stables.

"What's her name?" Dean says suddenly.

Dad pauses for half a second. "Don't actually know," he finally says. "The same spooks that made her made Colt and Thou, though, so you know she's going to have an attitude problem."

"You shut your mouth," Dean says, laughing, "Colt's seriously awesome, Dad."

Sam can't say he agrees with Dean. Colt hates him for some reason; the only reason Sam isn't missing an arm or his head is because Dean has good reflexes. The stupid dragon had gone straight for Sam's face the first time they met each other and Sam's been avoiding her ever since.

Dean, on the other hand, loves Colt. He sometimes sneaks into the stables under the guise of looking for Dad just so he can gawk at Colt. Colt tolerates it, which is more than Sam can say about, well, anything she does where Sam's concerned.

There's something about him that sets both Colt and Thou Shalt Not Suffer on edge, to the point where Sam's usually banned from the dragon stables unless both of them are flying or in the Holding for maintenance. Nobody's ever met the dragon creators, but Sam's sure the creator of those two dragons is a dick.

He's not expecting much from this new one. At least Gordon wasn't up top, which means him and Thou are probably flying rounds over Thremedon right now. Gordon's fucking creepy.

"Here," Dad says.

Sam purposefully hangs back when Dad pushes the doors open to slide into the new dragon's room. One of the stable hands gives him a quick, commiserating grin; he's missing a couple of fingers from when Paradise Lost got pissed to hell about something ridiculous, Sam knows, even if he doesn't know the guy's name.

Most of the stable guys are only here because they're Mollyrats who don't have any better prospects. Missing your fingers is a lot better than what can happen to you if you have sticky ones and you get caught.

The only reason Dean's still got all of his is because Dad made Hunter the same day Dean finally got caught. Sam's always thought it was more than freakishly convenient, but he's kept that to himself. It's better to have a stroke of luck than it is to have bad luck, right?

"Not going in?" the stable hand says.

Sam shakes his head and gives him a rueful smile. "I'm not feeling suicidal today," he says. "I'm just here because Dad thinks everyone loves the dragons like he does."

The guy shrugs. "Not everyone has to wipe them down after a raid," the guy says. "She's a nice one, if it makes any difference. Hasn't tried to eat anyone yet, just lays there with her eyes closed. Haven't even heard her say a word."

Which is, of course, when Sam hears a small, startled noise behind him that's so unmistakably Dean that he's spinning around and pushing the door back open with one shoulder before he can think about it. Dad's not gonna let Dean get hurt if he can help it, but.

Dragons are about four tons of solid metal and magic all woven together until they have a life and moods of their own. There's no way anyone can stand up to that sort of thing and hope to stop it.

Dean's okay, though, when Sam makes it into the room. The dragon's a big, black monster of a thing, obviously a crusher on par with Paradise instead of a Jaqueline of all trades like the Thou Shalt Not Suffer and Colt.

And she has her head pressed against Dean's hand like she's a pony, not a magical metal dragon. Sam feels his heart sink even before Dean's face comes up, beaming. "Dude," he says breathily.

"Your vocabulary is decidedly lacking," the dragon says. Sam can hear the amusement bouncing around in her, hollow and echoing through her chest.

"Stick with me, baby," Dean says, palming the gears at the corner of her mouth, "You'll be swearing like a sailor in no time."

Sam was going to tell his dad about the 'Versity today. As soon as they got home. He was going to take his chances that Dad would maybe, just maybe, be a little bit proud of him before he started all the yelling that inevitably follows every single choice Sam makes.

Now, though? Now that's not going to happen. Sam's going to be invisible.

"What's her name?" he manages, swallowing past the lump in his throat.

It doesn't cross his mind for a second that Dean's dragon is going to hate him. Dean won't stand for it.

"Impala," the dragon purrs, turning one green eye on him. It's almost as big as Sam's palm, which he's always found disconcerting and creepy. "You're like Dean. Come here," she croons.

Sam would rather not get anywhere near the dragon. He doesn't like them. He's never liked them. Half the time, his damn Talent flares up like an itch in his skull, skip, skip, skipping through so many little flashes of future that he wants to curl up in a ball and die.

They're never good futures, either. It's all death and fire, flashes of yellow eyes that he keeps to himself because all he needs to is to be known for his delusions like his dad is.

Impala tilts her head to the side, out of Dean's hand. "Come here," she repeats. "I'm not going to hurt you. You're like Dean."

"I'm his brother," Sam says, since nobody else seems willing to.

"Ah," Impala says, "Well, that explains it. You seem to have nicer manners than he does, though." There's a smile in her voice that actually makes Sam want to relax, a little.

Dean snorts. "Yeah, he's got a freaky big brain too," he tells Impala, still riding the high of... whatever it is that happens to riders when they bond with the dragons, "Guess how many languages he knows, babe. Just guess."

Dad's suddenly looking at Sam through narrow eyes. "Three," he guesses, assessing.

Sam swallows hard and lifts his chin. "Yeah," he says. "Three."

"Smart boy," Impala says. "Seriously, Sam, come here. I want to smell you."

"You're a big metal dragon," Sam points out dryly, "You can't really smell anything, can you?"

"I know Dean needs a bath," she says.

Sam looks over at Dad and then Dean before he reluctantly moves over towards Impala. His family isn't going to let anything happen to him, at least that's what Dean always tells him. If they can help it. If Impala doesn't decide to turn into a total bitch like Colt and Thou Shalt are.

She snags Sam gently by the front of his shirt with one claw as soon as he's in range. Dean presses a reassuring hand to his back a second later, hovering like he's just introduced Sam to the his first date (Charity from Hapenny Lane, before she started working with the whores from Tuesday Street).

It's kind of creepy, and Sam focuses on that instead of his pounding heart. Sweat prickles on his arms and his hairline. He knows the dragons are big, but he's only ever seen them up close once or twice. He's more used to seeing them wheeling in the air, to shading a hand so he can pick out Colt and Dad up there as they fly off to save the country.

Impala just leans down to nose him. "There you are," she says. "You don't have to be afraid of me, Sam. I won't hurt you."

Sam gets a sudden vision of her smashed to shit in a brown landscape, half buried under sand and bleached to watery grey under an unforgiving sun. He stumbles back into Dean's hand as the familiar pain starts to lace through his skull.

Oh, he thinks, and another one hits, this time Dean in the clouds, smirking behind his goggles. Impala's wheeling around and it's the middle of the day, so they're just fucking around, just playing, and it ends just like that. Sometimes he sees things like that, useless little moments in their lives that don't mean anything, except that Dean's smiling.

He braces himself for more splinters, but that's it. The headache is already fading. Impala's leaning against his chest when Sam resurfaces and Dean's bracing him at his back. Dad's standing back like always, watching instead of helping, looking at him like he doesn't even know him. It drives Sam nuts.

"What'd you see?" Dean asks under his breath.

"Dean," Dad says immediately. "Shut your mouth."

Sam reaches up to touch the side of Impala's muzzle. It's slick and cool under his palm, just metal no matter what anybody says, and he says, "Nothing important," because it wasn't. His visions never help anyone because he isn't trained.

He sees possibilities, but he changes them too. Dean's not going to forget his pocket knife in that whore's bed tonight because he'll be thinking about what Sam said earlier. Impala might never crash, Dean might never smile, it's all stupid and mixed up.

"Sammy," Dean says.

"It's fine, Dean."

* * *

The huge fight that happens that night makes Sam feel like shit; he clenches his fists until they're shaking he's so pissed, but he keeps seeing Dean too, tight-lipped and white-faced behind Dad. Because this should have been a good day for both of them, this should have been awesome.

If they were anyone else, Dad might have congratulated Sam on getting into the 'Versity. He taught himself three languages. He'd like to see someone else from Molly do that.

It's never enough, though, not for Dad. "I'm going," Sam says softly. His anger's burning slow and hot in his belly and his head is pounding. He wants to punch Dad in the face, but Dad's a Hunter and Sam values his bones too much to risk them on something that hard-headed. "There's nothing you can do to stop me, Dad."

There's actually a lot Dad could do. Sam's hoping against hope that if he pisses the man off enough, Dad's not gonna think about going to Th'Esar and demanding that his son isn't allowed into 'Versity. Dad's a Hunter, he gets what he wants most of the time.

"You walk out that door, you better not come back," Dad says.

Sam doesn't get a vision. His visions are pretty much useless for real-life shit, so he's not expecting one. "Fine," he says. Fine. He doesn't need to know how this is going to turn out, he already knows. He's going to leave. He's not going to let Dad drag him down, make him stay.

He wants to be something other than a Hunter's son, kept in reserve in case they need someone of the same blood if his Dad dies. And Dean...

Sam risks a glance at Dean and then swallows, hard. Dean's not going to be any help at all. Dean's so pale Sam's almost afraid he's going to faint; he's rubbing anxiously at his mouth with the side of one hand and tapping his fingers against his thigh with the other.

"Dad," Dean says when he notices Sam looking, "Come on, you can't say stuff like that." He laughs, a little faintly, and tries to smile. "You know Sammy, he takes things literally."

"Shut up, Dean," Sam says. He'd flush if he wasn't already hot from anger. "Just shut up, okay? You can't--"

"Sammy," says Dean. "You know you can't leave. I'm real proud of you for getting in," and Sam thinks, 'no you're not, you're pissed and you're scared and you hate me right now, I can tell' but he keeps that to himself, "But you know you can't go."

"I'm going," Sam repeats.

"You heard the consequence," Dad says.

Yeah, Sam did. And maybe he's as selfish and stupid as Dean and Dad always say he is, because that's not going to stop him, not at all. "I'm not deaf," Sam says and spins on his heel to grab the bag he'd packed the night before.

He may not have gotten a vision about it, but he knows his Dad.

"Christ, you wonder why I want to leave," Sam hisses. Dad pauses. "You can't even look at me long enough to freakin' argue with me, Dad."

"I don't have anything else to say to you, Sam," Dad says. "You heard me. If you're gonna be a stupid, stubborn ass little bitch, I'll be damned before I give you any more of my attention."

As far as Dad's concerned, that's the end of the argument. Sam watches his back as he turns away, walks away, just like that. He's so pissed he's suddenly shaking with it.

"Who's gonna protect you, huh?" Dean asks, sliding around until he's got an arm pressed against the top of Sam's bag, pushing it back down to the floor. "What's gonna happen if your stupid ass gets sniffed out by Th'Esar's spooks, huh? Come on, Sammy, you're smarter than this."

Sam stares at his brother stonily. "Let go, Dean," he says.

He's been hiding all of his life. It's not like he's going to go right up to one of the sniffers and throw say, "So, I've got this Talent and I want Th'Esar to lock me up in the Tower so he can use me to do... whatever it is he uses magicians for. Can you help with that?"

He's smarter than that.

"Sammy..." Dean trails off when he sees Sam's face.

"You got a dragon," Sam says. His voice has softened stupidly, because Dean's his big brother and they've never really understood each other, but Dean's the one who taught him how to tie his shoes and lift wallets. "Dean, you've got everything you've ever wanted now. I need to. I need to go. I need to get that for myself."

Dean's face is unreadable. "And you think you can't find that here," he says.

"I know I can't."

"You won't even try."

Sam drops his bag abruptly and spreads his arms wide. "I've been trying!" he shouts. "I've cleaned the stupid stables and I've tried to help Dad with his stupid dragon and Colt hates me. I hate them, Dean! I don't want to be anywhere near the dragons or the Hunters."

"So, what," Dean says, "You hate me now too, is that it?"

Sam stares at him for a long minute because Dean's an idiot. "What?" he asks. "Why would you even ask me that, Dean?"

"You forget what happened last night?"

I told you that I was getting out, I was leaving, I was going to be something better than a Mollyedge rat trying to get through life by risking my limbs with the goddamn dragons.

Whatever Dean sees on his face, it makes his brother drag a hand across his forehead. "Impala," he says.

"Impala's... different," Sam mutters. "And we're not talking about you anyway."

"No, because you're a selfish little bitch," Dean snaps. 

"You're the one who wants me to stay!" Sam clenches his fists again before he bends over to pick up his bag. "I'm miserable here, Dean, and you want me to stay anyway. Which one of us is being selfish?"

"You."

"Fine. This selfish bitch is going to the 'Versity."

Dean's eyes flicker. "Dad's not gonna let you come back," he says, like it's all a big loss. Like Dad's even home enough for Sam to care. Dean's got a dragon now, too, he's going to be moving into the Hunter's Quarters. What does he even think Sam's going to do when that happens?

If he doesn't go, he's going to be alone anyway. God, his brother's stupid sometimes.

"I heard him," Sam says, "You don't have to remind me." He swallows a few times, Adam's apple bobbing, before he ventures, "Can I still come see you?"

Dean barks a laugh that sounds like it hurts. "Where, huh?" he asks, "At the 'Versity? Yeah, good luck. I'm not getting anywhere near that stuck up hellhole. You gonna come here? And risk seeing Dad? Fuck that, I know you're not."

Sam taps his fingers against his thigh and shrugs. "You know where to find me," he finally says, and walks away.

If Dean doesn't want to meet him halfway, than screw him too. He's always been Dad's good little soldier and now he's really going to be Dad's little hunter. Screw him.

Sam wipes furiously at his eyes and turns his feet towards Charlotte.


	2. Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now vs. Then

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the second part, which is really the last part. Everything after this is just disjointed ramblings to let you know where it was going.

_Now_

Impala is keening beneath him, wheeling and fighting him when he turns her back towards Thremedon. "Goddamnit," Dean yells, "Don't you do this to me. Don't you do it."

"Colt," Impala howls back.

Yeah, Dean can see her. Dean can see her on the ground and flailing but he also knows what that hesitation in Impala's wings is and he can't. He can't make the choice. There's not enough fuel in her to fight everything to get down to Colt and Dean needs to get back.

He can't leave Dad, though, any more than Impala can leave Colt, and he's cursing as he uses one leg to heave them back around. "We get down there, we grab Dad, and we get the fuck out," Dean grits.

"What about Colt?" One of Impala's wings flutters out of sequence, the gears groaning loudly enough that Dean can hear them over the roar of the fires down below.

Dean reaches out to slap out a bit of burning tar before the flames can get into her gears and crack something important. "Don't ask me that," he says.

Impala's a crusher but even she's not big enough to carry Colt home, not even if she was on full fuel and hadn't gotten winged by a fucking fireball earlier. The dragons aren't meant to be easy to move; that's why they're magic.

"We can't leave her," Impala shouts.

Dean rolls his wrists instead of answering and the motion pulls down on Impala's bridle until she opens her mouth and spews a weak gutter of flames down at the magician directing all of the wind. The magician falters for just long enough that Dean can dip down below the lip of the tower.

"We can't take her," Dean responds.

"We can't leave her," she says again. "We can't let those Ke-Han bastards get their hands on her."

Dean knows. The first priority is always going to be the dragon, but they can't take this whole fucking tower down without a lot more firepower than they have, which means they can't recover Colt, even if she is still flailing on the ground. They can, however, get Dad.

They're going to have to come back for the dragon.

Impala goes screeching past another level of mages without even pausing; they're trusting Tamara and Palo Santo to watch their asses, which is freakin' idiotic on so many levels that Dean's honestly a little surprised that the catapults haven't caught them yet.

Tamara's a cool chick, if you don't count that batshit insane she is over trying to kill Ke-Han. Nobody's ever said anything, but it's pretty common knowledge that she's the reason Wandell didn't come back. Single-minded is a nice way to put it.

"Dean," Impala says, "I don't see him."

Neither does Dean. He's trying not to think about it, but if Dad was still on Colt, she'd be spewing fire right now, not flailing like a dying fish. "Shut your mouth," Dean says and feels Impala rumble a friendly growl up at him. "He's fine. He's Dad."

He snaps over to the side when one of the Ke-Han bastards decides to get cute and aim a jet of water at him when he flies by. Impala's saddle is thin and burnt at this point, but Dean manages to keep his hands in her bridle as he hangs off her side.

"I'm not going to let you fall," says Impala.

"I know."

He still doesn't see anything down there. The Ke-Han soldiers are starting to swarm but Colt's taking them down with her wings and her claws. Dean doesn't see short hair in there, or the green-brown of the Hunter uniforms.

"I'm landing," he informs Impala.

"No you're fucking not," Impala says.

Dean cranks her head around so that she has to look at him. "This was your freakin' idea," Dean says hotly.

"We're not going to be able to help anyone if your stupid ass gets killed," she says. Her wings beat harder the closer they get to the ground and Dean makes her breathe fire again to clear the way. The Ke-Han warriors are pretty damn useless against a dragon, but get one of the Hunters on the ground...

"Fine," Dean snaps, "Fine." Fuck. Fuck. He still can't see Dad and Impala's hovering is kicking up enough dirt and sand that he's not going to be able to look much longer.

"Colt," Impala calls.

Colt's head whips up to pin Dean with a single blue eye. He recoils on Impala; the left half of her face is a ruined mess of metal, gears melted so that her mouth is melded shut. "Get out of here," she hisses.

It's a freakin' good thing that the dragons don't need to open their mouths to talk.

"Where's Dad?" Dean asks, ignoring her demands.

"I don't know," Colt says. She spears out with one of her claws to skewer an incoming Ke-Han warrior and Impala leans over to helpfully pop his head off with a forelimb.

Dean ignores the long strands of blond hair that get caught in her claws. "How do you not know?" he demands. "He's your rider."

"I don't know," Colt snaps. "He was here and then he wasn't. Get the fuck out of here, Dean."

Her wings are broken. One of them is fucking missing, there's no way in hell they're going to get her back up into the air. Impala heaves a sigh like she's dying and starts to beat her wings even harder, pushing up into the air before Dean can even brace himself. "We'll be back," she says.

Dean glances out over the battlefield, but he still only sees Ke-Han black and gold, no green-brown standing out. "We can't leave without Dad," Dean says, a little helplessly.

"We have to," Impala murmurs. Her wings jam again for a single, breathless beat, and then catch themselves as she heaves herself back above the tower. The Ke-Han spooks are concentrating on Palo right now, darting through the clouds to leave devastation in her wake, so Dean pulls Impala up and points her towards home.

"He'll be fine," Dean says but it sounds ridiculous even to his own ears.

"He's John Winchester," says Impala, "He's not going to let the Ke-Han bastards take him down without a fight."

* * *

Sam's last name is a mystery to pretty much anyone in the 'Versity except the professors. He prefers it that way; he's been John's boy for years, the last thing he wants to be known as is Hunter Dean's brother too.

It makes him feel like a failure and that's not something he's ever going to take well.

It's also why he knows that John's dead long before the professor's get around to calling him up into the offices.

"Colt didn't come back," Jess says in classes that morning.

Sam puts his books down on the desk and looks up through his bangs. "Colt's a loose cannon," Sam says. "She's probably decided to hunker down in the mountains or something because she ran out of fuel. Again."

"You know way too much about something you pretend to hate." Jess leans over to ruffle his hair. "And the way the entire Hunter's Quarters are in an uproar, it definitely wasn't planned. Hunter Dean marched into the palace this morning."

A chill races down Sam's spine. "Dean hates Th'Esar," he says.

Jess is an awesome friend, which is why she doesn't ask how he knows that. "He was in there for a couple hours," she offers, "And Andy says he came out and punched the wall."

So Sam knows where to find him after classes that day.

The Hunter's infirmary is attached to the Quarter's, but Sam's in luck when he loiters around the front of them. Bobby takes one look at him and sighs, "Damn, you got big, boy," then, "Your idjit brother's in the infirmary, but I guess you know that. Go on through."

It's been four years since Sam's set foot anywhere near the Hunters. He still knows where to go, though, and he finds himself in the infirmary a lot sooner than he really wants to be.

Dean's on one of the beds, flexing the fingers of his right hand with a mulish expression. His left is bandaged to the fingertips, a splint making it bulky and ridiculous looking. Sam takes a minute to lean against the doorframe and categorizes all the changes he can see.

Dean was an adult when Sam left, but his shoulders have gotten wider and his face has slimmed down. The freckles have faded like he's not seeing the sun any more, but his eyes are still green when they flick to Sam and stare.

"How badly did you break it?" Sam asks.

His brother purposefully flexes his left hand and shrugs. "One or two bones," he says, "I wasn't really paying attention when they were talking."

"You going to be able to ride Impala with that?"

Dean stares at him like he's missing screws. "No," he says slowly, "I'm going to leave Dad out there because of a little flesh wound. Dude, that totally sounds like me, right?"

Sam shrugs and pushes himself off the door. Dean looks a little leery when he sits down beside him, but Sam just takes his hand to press along the splints. "Compound or clean?" he asks.

"Hairline," Dean says.

The knuckles, obviously. "That was stupid," Sam says. "You gonna tell me why you did it?"

"They're not worried about Dad." Dean's clenching his jaw when Sam looks over, the muscles in his cheeks ticking. "They're worried about freakin' Colt."

It'd be suicide right now to point out that Th'Esar's never been particularly concerned with the Hunters. As far as anyone's concerned, the Hunters are replaceable. The dragons are expensive and slow to create; they haven't managed to make a new one since Impala and that was four years ago.

Instead, Sam chews on his lip and lets Dean's hand go. "So you can find him when you go out to get Colt," he says reasonably.

"I'm not going out to get her," Dean spits out.

"But you just said--"

"Th'Esar doesn't want anyone's priorities getting screwed," Dean says. He slams his good hand against the top of the bed.

"So go anyway," Sam says. "It's not like you've ever followed an order in your life." 'Unless Dad gave it,' goes unsaid, loud but ignored in the space between them. Sam's not here to fight.

"There's a difference between giving Bobby hell when he tells me to get some rest and ignoring the freakin' ruler of the damn country, Sammy," Dean says.

"It's Sam."

Dean's eyes cut to him warningly. Sam puts his hands in the air in a show of surrender. He's willing to admit that now's not really the time for that.

"The 'Versity professors are going out with some magicians too," Sam finally says.

"That's great for them, Sam."

Dean doesn't get it. "The 'Versity, where I go to school, is going to help find Colt," Sam says. "I'm on good terms with my professors and they know who's kid I am. They'll let me go with them."

"I can do this myself," Dean blusters.

Sam stares at him and quirks an eyebrow. "No you can't," he says gently. He might not have seen his brother in four years, but he still knows him. Dean hates being alone. He can't function unless he's part of a team and has someone to lean on.

"Maybe I just don't want to do it alone, you ever thought of that?" Dean asks.

Sam shrugs again. "You don't have to," he says.

Dean'll go into the skies regardless of what Th'Esar says. Sam'll take the land route. Between the two of them, they'll be able to find Dad. If he's still alive.

"He's still alive," Dean says, on the same page as Sam like he almost always is. "He's Dad, dude. He's fine. He's gotta be."

Sam finds himself nodding even though he thinks that the blind faith Dean has in the man is going to get him killed one day. "I know," he says, and then, "Can you take me to see Impala?"

His visions have been mostly quiet at the 'Versity. They're not especially helpful, but they're going to be better than nothing, and if he can get a glimpse of something, anything, it's going to be because he's around the dragons.

They've always sent him haywire.

"Dad wouldn't want you to do that," Dean says.

"You gonna stop me?"

Dean stares at his hands for a long moment. "Impala might be pissy," he says.

"You were in such a hurry to scream at Th'Esar that you didn't clean her up, did you?" Sam already knows the answer to that.

Dean grimaces. "She's gotta be covered in two inches of soot and grime, man, she's going to bite my freakin' head off."

"Better you than me."

Sam stands up, offers Dean a hand, and pulls his brother to his feet when Dean accepts it. He doesn't know which room is Dean's, so he hovers back for a second to let his brother take the lead.

That's something he never thought he was going to have to think again.

Impala still looks like new. Sam pauses in the doorway, because he hasn't really thought about it, but at the same time he expected Impala to look a lot like Colt now.

There are no dings marring her wings, though. Her gears are still shiny and black without a hint of lossed color and she still has all of her scales. When they pulled Harvelle in and gave her a total rehaul after Bill went down, she hadn't looked new for much more than a month.

It's been four years and Impala still looks like she just got into the stables for the first time.

"Dude," Sam says, "How much time do you spend cleaning her?"

Impala rumbles a laugh; Sam jumps. He's forgotten how wrong they sound when they do that. It's hollow and bouncing like an echo. "Way too much," Impala says. "Hello, Sam. I've missed you."

Sam's met her once. He cuts his eyes over to Dean. "Don't look at me like that," Dean says, "I don't know where her obsession with you's come from. Frankly, it's a little creepy."

"So's the way you talk about your kid brother all the time," Impala murmurs, "I don't call you on that, do I?"

"Seriously?" Sam asks. "What've you been telling her, Dean?"

"All sorts of stories," she says. "You used to eat fireflies when you were very small, apparently. Dean thought it was adorable, though he yelled at you whenever he caught you doing it."

Sam stares at his brother. "That is kind of creepy, Dean," he says.

Dean rubs his hand down his face and says, "Shut your cakehole, Sammy."

"It's Sam," Impala rumbles distractedly.

"Thank you," Sam says and looks her full in the face for the first time.

That is, of course, when the visions hit. He flails out with one hand to catch Dean's jacket, anchoring himself, and lets them rip through him. It hurts, it always fucking hurts, but there'd been another precog Talent at the 'Versity and Sam's picked up a thing or two watching her force her visions.

Like the fact that he turns into Dean now, instead of curling up into himself. It's easier to figure out where he is and what he needs to look for if he reminds himself of why he's doing it.

There's still that vision of Impala in the sand. It's the same one he saw four years ago, just a snapshot of her wings broken and wind blowing sand so hard that it's gotten caked into her gears. She wouldn't be able to fly even if she could. There's a gaping hole in her chest and something's missing because her eyes are dim and dead instead of glowing faintly.

She's broken and it's horrible and Sam clenches his fingers in Dean's clothes so that he has the courage to look for his brother under her wreckage. This isn't the vision he wants, but he needs to know. They wouldn't have left Impala out in the sand long enough for her to decompose.

No bones are around her or under her, though, so this vision is useless, just blowing wind and gritty sand and Sam lets it go with a grateful sigh.

He follows the next flickering vision only long enough to figure out that it's going to be useless too, just Dean smiling at a blonde Sam vaguely recognizes. Jo? he thinks, and then it doesn't matter because it's not what he wants. He lets that vision go as well and concentrates on the next one pounding through his skull.

"--should feel grateful," someone is saying and they have yellow eyes, sly and foreign. "It was going to be you, but your daddy struck a deal. Like mommy like daddy, huh? Your family just can't seem to stop giving me exactly what I want."

The man leans in to nuzzle Dean's face. "What will you be willing to give me, I wonder?" the man asks.

"Not a damn thing," Dean grits.

"That's what you say now," the man says, "But you'll change your mind. You're going to want something from me, Dean-o, and I'll give it to you. For a price."

This is important, Sam thinks, but it's not something that feels familiar in the slightest, so he doesn't hang on to it. He concentrates instead on the feel of Dean's arm under his hand. It's corded like Dean's clenching onto something, so Sam flicks him absently and dives into the next vision.

His head is going to be killing him in about two seconds. He needs to make this count because none of these visions have been about finding his dad, about Colt, and that's going to make it a piss-poor shot in hell of finding her.

The Ke-Han have moved her by now, but the dragons can't fly in daylight to go find her. They'll be punched out of the sky in an instant.

"Sammy," Sam hears. It means that the visions are going to be ending soon; he's usually deaf and blind to the outside world when he's seeing possibilities. Not yet, he thinks desperately, and turns his attention to another fork, another possibility that might happen.

It's sand again, a desolate landscape like the first vision, but this time it's Colt spread out against the ground like a dead bird, her wings fanned wide and useless. There's people swarming all over her, wearing dark Ke-Han colors with braids in their long hair and this. This is what Sam was looking for.

"Hurry it up," someone says. She's beautiful and blonde with blue highlights at her temples, but there's something wrong with her that instinctively sets all of Sam's hackles on end. "Ava's got a lead on our brother out there and I want to get home sometime this century. We need to finish this shit up."

Colt doesn't so much as twitch. Her chest is gaping open like the Impala's in the other vision. Sam has a minute to appreciate that because he's not a saint and he's always hated that fucking dragon, and then he notices the same man from the other vision.

He's cradling something roughly the size of an infant, swirling blue and white at its core with delicate metal filigree on either end. It looks like an egg. "Hold your tongue, Ruby," he says. "This is delicate work."

The woman flicks her hair over her shoulders and sighs. "You always say that," she mutters, "And it never is. When was the last time we busted a dragon?"

"This is important," the man says again, "A lifetime of dedication and work."

Sam turns his head away from them because he's not going to understand one way or the other. There's someone kneeling in the sand about twenty feet from the man with the yellow eyes and Sam's heart pangs hard when he recognizes the brown-green of a Hunter's uniform.

Dad's hair is shaggy, grown out of its short buzz, but he's still alive. He's staring at the ruined body of his dragon like it holds all the secrets in the universe.

The vision skitters away abruptly enough that Sam reels with the sudden pain of the accompanying migraine. He tries to steady himself on Dean's arm; flailing isn't as dignified as it could be, but it gets the job done. Sam's other hand connects with something cool and metal when he reaches out again.

"Easy," Impala murmurs at the same time that Dean says, "I gotcha Sammy, it's okay."

Sam digs his fingernails into Dean's arm and lets the pain pound through his skull with a grimace. "One of them," he says, "Dad's alive in one of them."

He doesn't think he imagines the leaching of tension out of Dean's body. "Course he is," Dean says very softly, "He's Dad." His voice is a little shaky, but.

Dean knows his visions about as well as Sam does. If Sam sees Dad alive in a vision right now, that means he's not dead yet. He's still around to influence what he sees.

That's more than they had before he came here.

Sam lets himself slump against his brother and his brother's stupid dragon and surrenders to the pain pouring through him like waves. He can worry about everything else he's seen later.

* * *

Dean hates Sam's Talent. It's been four years and he's kind of tricked himself into forgetting how much he freakin' hates it, but now Sam's here in all his post-vision glory, clutching on to Dean's arm like he's two instead of twenty-two.

"You've said he's always fine after these," Impala says.

He's pretty sure he's not imagining the accusing tone in her voice, so Dean flips her off with the hand no currently being crushed under his brother's fingertips. "Seriously," Dean says, "You are freakishly attached to someone you've meant once."

Impala does her version of a shrug. Her tail twitches towards Dean and her wings mantle out until they scrape against the scales on her front legs. "He's important to you," she says.

"You've met him once," Dean feels the need to point out again. He eases Sam to the floor. Here's as good a place as any for Sam to take a fifteen minute nap; the stables are always warm because the dragon's hate when their metal cools.

There's no straw like there is in horse stables, but the floor's clean and they've slept on harder in their childhood. "You still with me, Sammy?" Dean asks, pressing his fingertips into Sam's messy hair.

"Shut up, Dean," Sam groans and swallows hard.

Dean would like to think he's an awesome brother, even if he hasn't seen his kid brother in four years, so he does not let go and back the fuck off at the prospect of getting hurled on. Also, Impala's a bitch and she has a forelimb pressed against Dean's back suddenly so he can't anyway.

"Do not upchuck, kiddo." Dean ruffles Sam's hair gently. "I am not obligated to put up with you when you're disgusting, no matter how many dirty diapers I changed."

Impala peers around his back to nose her muzzle under Sam's hand again. "Feel free," she says, "Dean'll clean it up. Hard work is good for him, it keeps him honest."

"You are the worst freakin' dragon in the stable," Dean says.

He loves his stupid fucking dragon. He cannot explain her weird obsession with Sam and babying him, but he loves her anyway. He's told her so many stories about his kid brother that he's surprised she hasn't just curled up around him and started purring like a giant, overprotective metal cat.

Dean's pretty sure she wants to.

He cards his fingers through Sam's hair in a way that is totally manly and not girly at all, thank you very much, and lets Sam lean that stupid shaggy head against his thigh.

Has he mentioned that he hates Sam's Talent?

"What did you see?" Impala asks after a long few minutes. Sam's breathing has evened out and his hands have stopped shaking, but he still has a death grip on Dean's pant leg.

"A man with yellow eyes," Sam finally says. "He was in two of them. Dad and Colt were in one. You were in another."

"You saw Colt?"

"Yeah."

Sam doesn't say anything else about Impala, which tells Dean more than he wants to know. The only times Sam refuses to share visions about Dean is when they're horrible; he hopes his little brother hasn't seen him die again.

Dean wants to focus on that, but his mind gets snagged on the fact that Sam says he saw a yellow eyed man. "Was the guy Ke-Han?" he asks suspiciously.

When Dad got real drunk when they were kids, he used to start raving about the Ke-Han bastard he claimed started the fire that saw Molly burning for three days. Dean always made damn sure Sam was out of hearing range before he brought Dad home because that inevitably degraded into a long ass rant on how Dad just knew the yellow eyed bastard had done something to his boy before he killed Mom.

How else would the child of a couple of nobodies end up with a Talent? Talent didn't just freakin' pop up out of nowhere. It was hereditary and neither John or Mary had an ounce of it. At least, Dean and Dad both assumed Mom didn't.

He wasn't old enough to ask, now was he? And apparently the thought had never occured to John until Mom was already gone and Sam was a year old and sobbing through his first visions.

'That yellow eyed Ke-Han bastard' was the refrain of Dean's childhood. He'd always just nodded his head and gotten Dad into bed rather than dwell on it.

If Sam's seeing him, though, if Sam's Talent is picking up a yellow-eyed man...

"Ke-Han," Sam says breathlessly, "Yellow-eyes, shorter than you," which is just offensive, shut the hell up you bitch, "Brown hair, no braids. Magician, I think, definitely not a warrior."

"But he had yellow eyes?"

Sam frowns vaguely. "Not like the irises were yellow," he says, "More like, I don't know, yellow clouds, or something over his eyes. It was creepy as hell, man."

The yellow-eyed Ke-Han bastard, Dean hears again in his head. The one that stood over Sammy's crib when he was a baby and killed Mom and burned down all of Molly. The one that can't possibly be real because there's no way in hell a Ke-Han magician got into Thremedon and the sniffers didn't catch him.

"Your father," Impala says, "He talked about a yellow-eyed man, didn't he?"

Dean feels the uncomfortable, unfamiliar urge to punch his damn dragon in the face. "Yeah," he says, "Yeah, he did."

Sam narrows his eyes up at him. "I don't remember hearing about that," he says.

"Come on, Sammy, Dad was in the war long before Colt picked him," Dean asks helplessly. The lie sits heavily on his tongue, but he forces it out anyway. "Who the hell knows what he saw as a foot soldier. Her friggin' hates the Ke-Han."

His brother shrugs uncomfortably. "Mom was Ke-Han," he says, "I never really got why he hated them so much."

Dean grits his teeth like he always has to whenever Sam says that they're mother was part of those murdering bastards. She wasn't Ke-Han, he thinks mutinously, only he can remember her and he remembers the way she wore braids and the blue she streaked her hair with.

Mom might have been Ke-Han by birth, but she came to Thremedon and she married a soldier.

"I'll tell you about it when your brains aren't so scrambled," Dean settles on. He pats the top of Sam's head one last time before he moves away.

Sam's fingers fall away from the cuff of his pant leg as he frowns. "I hate when you and Dad keep shit from me," he mutters.

"You weren't exactly an easy kid to talk to, Sam," Dean points out.

Impala nudges against Sam's hand. "Your brother adores you," she says, catty as a whore and twice as liable to stab you in the back apparently, the bitch, "I'll tell you what you need to know if he doesn't. No secrets between us, alright?"

There's a long minute where Sam just stares down at his dragon and Dean scratches at his shoulder and tries hard as he can to imagine that she can't talk. "I saw you die," Sam says finally. "The first time I met you. You were crashed in the sand and something was gone from your chest."

The dragonsoul, Dean thinks with a jolt. Non-Hunters don't know what powers the dragons, don't know about the Well fuel or the hearts of them. The dragonsoul's what takes so long to create because if you don't do it just right, the dragon never animates.

There are useless shells already built, just waiting for the right magician to figure out how to pour Talent and personality into them.

"The vision with Colt was the same," Sam continues. "Only they had something with them. About so big," Sam sketches out a shape with his hands and then drops one of them back to Impala's skull, "Swirling. I don't know what it was, but I'm pretty sure they were planning to put it in Colt. That's the vision with Dad."

Impala might not want to keep secrets from Sam, but Dean really wants to. If the Ke-Han have figured out a way to make a dragonsoul they're all so very fucked. "Anything else?" Dean prods.

Sam squirms for a second. "The yellow-eyed magician was talking to you in another one," he offers. "I don't know what about." Sam's fucking lying to him, Den knows immediately. He's never been real good at doing it to Dean's face; he's got too many tells.

The way he's staring down at his hands, alternately peeking through his bangs at Dean and flicking his eyes away, that's as good as Sam shouting, "I'm lying to you about something pretty damn important, Dean. You should probably ask me about that before it manages to come back and bite us both in the ass."

He hates when Sam lies to him. He doesn't look to closely at the hypocrisy of that. He's not lying to Sam. He's omitting some facts Sam doesn't need to know because he doesn't have a dragon to ride. There's a difference.

Dean is totally going to keep telling himself that.

"Don't even," Impala says quietly when Dean opens his mouth to demand the truth. "Not right now, Dean. You should get your brother to bed." She lifts her head away from Sam's hand and pushes back towards the center of the room. "I need a break from the both of you. Go away."

"I'm fine," Sam says immediately. "I need to get back anyway. I need to talk to Professor Adamo."

Dean does not point out that Sam's hands are shaking or that he just about keels over trying to push himself upright. "You remember the way out, right?"

"Yeah, sure," Sam says.

Dean watches him walk away for a long minute before he looks over and meets Impala's disapproving eyes. She's curling herself up like a giant snake now, metal making faint tortured sounds as she rasps against herself. "You shouldn't lie to your brother," she says.

"It's for his own good," Dean says.

"Your brother can't protect himself if he doesn't know that he should be careful," says Impala.

"Do you know something that I don't?" Dean demands. "Otherwise, shut your piehole. He's a freakin' 'Versity student. Nothing's going to happen to him."

Impala scratches at the corner of her mouth and says, "Then why are you lying to him?"

"He doesn't need to know," he says.

He doesn't know which part he's talking about. The yellow-eyed magician, the fact that their dad might not be as bugfuck insane as Dean's always thought he was, or the dragonsoul.

* * *

They find Colt after a month of searching. The damn fucking Ke-Han bastards had been moving her around like she was a threepenny street game; there one day and gone the next. They'd always moved her during the day so that the dragons couldn't track her.

It galls the fuck out of Dean that the person who ended up finding Colt was a sniffer from Th'Esar.

He eyes the woman now, taking in the narrow breadth of her shoulders and the strange way the bones in her skull flared, like she was half grown even though she couldn't be a day under forty. She bares her teeth but doesn't say a word.

Dean's pretty sure she can't, which is off the rocks freaky as far as he's concerned. Freakin' sniffers.

"Where is she?" Dean finally asks. His eyes cut to Th'Esar.

"With the magicians, naturally," Th'Esar says. "She needs a bit of work before she's flight ready again."

Dean can remember Sam saying that Colt had a hole in her chest, that she was missing something important and a Ke-Han magician had it. A yellow eyed Ke-Han magician. "The dragonsoul?"

Th'Esar waves one hand negligibly. "It's in working order," he says, "It wasn't in their hands long enough for them to understand how to destroy it."

"So you're gonna have someone check it, right?" Dean asks. He's pressing his luck and he knows it, but Sam... Sam's not always right, but he's usually not spectacularly wrong. If he said that the Ke-Han bastards had figured out how to pull a dragonsoul out of one of the girls, Dean's going to believe him.

The woman next to Th'Esar rolls her eyes expansively. She still doesn't say a fucking word. It's still creepy as all fuck, but Dean's eyes flick to watch Th'Esar's expression.

It's odd, he has time to think before it smooths out again. It'd hadn't been anger even though that's what Dean had been expecting, but it hadn't been amusement either. Th'Esar had looked contemplative, like there was something he knew that he wasn't going to tell Dean.

He better damn well have told Bobby, then. Dean loves Impala, but he's not going to be flying when th'Esar's keeping secrets about how well the Ke-Han know how his girl functions.

At least, that's what he tells himself. He's pretty sure he'd go stir crazy within a weak if he wasn't allowed to fly.

"You have a brother, don't you?" Th'Esar asks abruptly.

Dean's spine stiffens. He thinks about lying. The damn sniffer, though, is looking at him like she's just waiting for it, her head cocked to the side as this creeptastic little smile flirts around her mouth. "He's at the 'Versity," Dean mutters.

"And how does Colt feel about him?"

"Hates his freakin' guts," Dean says frankly.

Th'Esar looks to the sniffer bitch long enough to catch her firm nod. Dean sucks on his teeth before he covertly flips her off. He doesn't need to be lie-checked.

He's pathetically grateful that he doesn't have to lie. He knows where Th'Esar's going with this. He's always assumed that Sam'll inherit Impala if he ever ends up on a dragon. Colt and Sam? A recipe for a disaster. One that involved his brother no longer having all of his limbs.

"That's unfortunate," Th'Esar finally remarks.

Dean nods his head agreeably and thanks fucking God that Sam hates Colt as much as Colt hates Sam. "They've never gotten along. Colt tried to rip his lungs out the first time Dad introduced them."

Talking about Dad brings something savage and horrible into his throat. There hadn't been a trace of John when they found Colt.

Colt's not talking about what she's been through, though, and that includes where the hell her rider is. Dean wants to strangle her or beat her until she starts to speak, but she's nothing but metal and magic and barely any personality.

It's hard to believe that she's from the same spook that made Impala.

"Colt will be back in the stables within the next week," Th'Esar says. He waves his hand in a clear dismissal.

Dean holds his ground. "What about my Dad?" he asks, then clarifies, "Hunter John," when both the damn sniffer and Th'Esar pretend like they have no idea what he's talking about.

"While unfortunate, Hunter John was lost in the line of duty," Th'Esar says. There's nothing at all in his voice that could be read as tactful; it's like he's talking about losing a damn dog or a pair of Th'Esarina's panties.

"That's my dad you're talking about," Dean grinds out. "There's no body. He could be alive right now, being tortured by the Ke-Han or just wandering around in the mountains where Colt went down. Someone needs to search for him."

"Hunter Dean," Th'Esar says, "Your father is no longer your concern. Your job is to fly your dragon to the best of your ability."

When Dean opens his mouth to argue, Th'Esar pointedly looks down at his rings and says softly, "Your brother is in a delicate, perilous position. I could order him to attempt to tame Colt."

It would be suicide for Sam to even try it. Dean swallows his anger as far down as he can, tasting bile and heavy saliva, and says, "You leave Sammy out of this."

"You're not in a position to bargain for anything, Hunter Dean," Th'Esar says, "However, it would be a shame to waste a mind like your brother's. Do your job."

Dean wants to take a swing at his face so badly he can almost taste it. He checks the impulse with shaking fingers and forces a smile that he's sure looks like he's getting ready to eat Th'Esar's face off. "Got it," he says.

It's the first time Impala's ever sat bitter and hateful in his belly. She's metal and magic, but there's also a little of his blood swirling around in her, a little of his blood keeping her under his power. She'd die for him and he'd die for her, but at the end of it all, when she comes back and he doesn't, she'll still be able to bond.

As long as there's someone close enough to Dean to bond to.

Colt should have been the same way, but she's never loved Sam the way she was fond of Dean and Dean? Dean can't ride two girls.

Th'Esar can order Sam to try his hand with Colt and it'd end in ruin.

For the first time in his life, Dean wishes his father hadn't been a big damn hero who ended up bonding with a dragon. He wishes he hadn't either, but that's a freakin' mute point when he has to go home and sleep in the room above Impala's stable.

He gives in to the urge to punch something when he gets out of the palace. It's the wall, again, but this time he manages not to snap anything in his hands.

His dad's missing. His brother's being held over his head like an axe to keep John missing and there's not a damn thing Dean can do about it, not if he wants to keep his baby brother alive. And he's ashamed to admit that Sam's life means a hell of a lot more to him than Dad's ever has.

"Goddamn," Dean says, and turns his feet towards the 'Versity.

If Th'Esar's going to hold this shit over his head, he's going to damn well make sure that Sam knows what he's getting into. Dean's not going to come back one day, or he's going to give in to his urges to go look for Dad.

If he has to ride Colt to do it, he needs to make sure Impala's taken care of.

* * *

Sam has to be the only person in the history of 'Versity who's had a family member interrupt a lecture with a cheerful call of, "Kiddo! Damn, you have boring ass definitions of 'fun.'"

It sounds incredibly forced to Sam's ears. He knows what he's going to see even before he turns his head to pin Dean with a filthy, unimpressed glare.

Dean's face is pinched around the mouth and the eyes. The lines around his eyes are deep and lined with grease right now and he looks... tired. Too tired to have good news at all.

Of course, Sam's a little more concerned with the fact that his professor is going to try to beat him with a ruler in a minute or two to give that the due concern it deserves. "Are you insane?" Sam hisses. He pushes himself out of his seat and gives Jess an apologetic look when she has to fold up her legs to let him pass.

He snags Dean's jacket with two fingers before his dumbass brother can do something else to draw everyone's attention.

"Dean, what the hell?" he demands when they're out in the hallway. "I'm pretty sure you said you weren't ever going to come here."

Dean rocks back on his feet and shrugs his shoulders. "I've said a lot of things over the years, Sammy," he says, still with that forced, creepy cheer. "Remember that time I told you you were gonna grow a pair of devil horns if you kept lying to me? Good times."

"Dean," Sam says firmly. "What the hell are you doing here?"

They haven't found dad. Sam knows they haven't found dad, which explains the lines on Dean's face, but there's something even grimmer in the turn of Dean's mouth. It makes something hot and a little scared slide through Sam's belly. "What happened?" he asks.

His brother grabs him by the shoulder and crowds him into a convenient corner in the hallway. This particular corner is always used for makeouts, but he doesn't expect Dean to know that.

He hopes to God Dean doesn't know that.

Dean slides a glance left and right, leaning into Sam heavily, before he says, "They found Colt," under his breath.

Sam's spine jolts until he's standing up straight. He looms over Dean when he does, which never gets old, but he's not in the right frame of mind right now to enjoy that. He's been back at the 'Versity for a week and a half now; they hadn't found anything when they'd been looking.

The Ke-Han are good at moving things when they put their mind to it. Sam keeps thinking uneasily of his vision of the desert and both Impala and Colt like broken birds on the sand.

"Where?" Sam mumbles.

"Desert," Dean says and Sam feels his heart sink so fast that it's in his toes before he even knows it.

"Dad was there," he says.

Dean's head shakes slowly. "We took those bastards down fast, Sammy," Dean says. "They were gettin' ready to move Colt again when we finally got to 'em. Dad wasn't anywhere near her."

Sam doesn't have the heart to correct him right now; it's not in the right spot and he can't breathe because Dean doesn't get it. Dad was there. Dad had to have been there. His visions change, Dean and him can change them, but they're never really wrong.

If they found Colt in the desert, the yellow-eyed magician Dean's so tight lipped about has already fucked her up. He's done something to her and Dean must read that in his eyes because he steps back and ruffles Sam's hair with a self-deprecating smile.

"Th'Esar's spooks are checking her out," says Dean. "Don't worry about it."

"Whenever you say 'don't worry about it' is when I start to worry about it, Dean," Sam points out. He pushes Dean back another step because he's not used to people in his space anymore. "There's something wrong with her, Dean."

"We don't know that," Dean denies immediately even though Sam can see that he kind of believes him.

"I know it," Sam says rebelliously.

"Suck it up, kiddo, we've got more important things to worry about right now."

Sam stares at his brother for a long, long minute. "More important than Dad and his dragon," he says blankly. He can't believe those words just came out of Dean's mouth. He can't believe Dean's even thought them.

"It can happen," Dean says lightly.

"In a million years, Dean!"

"Shut the hell up, bitch, and follow me."

"You're such a jerk, Dean."

He follows Dean anyway. He's not sure when that became normal again and he's kind of freaked out that it's come back to him so naturally. Sam had sworn to himself that he was done with this shit, trailing after Dean like a sad puppy while Dad called all the shots even though Sam never even saw him anymore.

Dad's not here and yeah, Sam wants him safe, but he also wants his own life.

Following Dean towards the Hunter's Quarters feels a lot like failure. The taste of smoke and grease on the air is a lot like home, and it makes Sam gag.

He hates the dragons. He doesn't want to be here. He follows Dean anyway.

* * *

"Rise and shine, sweetheart," Dean croons, throwing open the doors to Impala's stable with a flourish that's more for Sam than it is for her.

She rolls her eyes at him before they focus on Sam and brighten. "Sammy," she says with real pleasure distorting her voice in weird and kind of cool ways, "Welcome back."

"Sweetheart," Dean says, "You have seriously got your priorities twisted."

Impala chuckles quietly. "Sam smells so much nicer than you do," she says wistfully.

"Hey, I smell like you."

"I know," Impala says.

"I don't actually like dragons," Sam interjects. He's drawing tiny circles on one of Impala's scales as he says it, though, and she chuckles like he's told her a joke. "I don't," he insists.

Dean claps Sam on his shoulder, says, "You're such a lying little shit, Sam," and goes to look for a spare pair of goggles and gloves. His idea? Totally awesome. It's the middle of the day, so there's not gonna be a raid and nobody's gonna look too closely at a dragon flying laps around Thremedon.

Now he just needs to convince Sam to get on the damn dragon and he'll be set.

Impala rumbles behind him like she's laughing, but when Dean looks over she meets his eyes over Sam's messy hair and cocks her head. 'What are you doing, you stupid boy?' that look says.

Dean just looks down at his brother than up at her again and winks. His idea is kick-ass. He's not going to let Sam or Impala ruin it for him.

Besides, if he concentrates on just this right now, he's not going to do something insane and suicidal like fly out to look for his dad right now, at noon, when the sun's shining highest and Impala's black as night. She'd be shot down in an instant as soon as she got over Ke-Han land.

That's not what's stopping him, though. What's stopping him is Th'Esar's smile and the thought that if he does something stupid, something idiotic, Sam's going to pay the price for it.

He's got to make sure Sam's ready before he goes out and gets himself killed.

"Watch him," he tells Impala absently.

"What do you mean, 'watch me?'" Sam demands.

Dean waves an absent hand at him and squints at the wall of shit that's currently being completely useless. "Didn't think it was that hard to understand, Sam," he says, "I want her to watch your gigantor ass and make sure you don't do anything stupid."

"Like what?"

Like leave. "Dunno, man. You might wander out of here and get chowed on by Thou Shalt."

Sam snorts loudly, flicking his hair back of his eyes. "I don't know how many times I've got to tell you that I don't like the dragons, Dean. I'm not gonna try to go look for more of them."

"So stay put." Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever.

Impala rumbles quietly and nudges Sam's hand with a talon that's almost as big as Dean's fist. "What's wrong with keeping me company, Sam?" she asks plaintively. "I'm dying for intellectual conversation. Dean does not count."

He's seriously going to have to talk to his damn dragon about making fun of him when his pipsqueak brother is around. Dean narrows his eyes at her in warning before he slides out of the room in search of what he needs.

Sam's got a jacket on; it's gonna have to do. What he really needs, though, are goggles and gloves. Unless he wanted to get a bug in his eyes at a hundred miles an hour, but Dean doesn't think he does. It'd make it really freakin' hard to read all of his sissy books if his eye exploded from a bug induced injury.

Would be kind of funny though.

He gives a few thoughts to stealing Gordon's stuff, just to watch the man flip his shit, but in the end he ends up going to Colt's room. Dad's the closest in size to Sammy that they've got, so he's not going to have to adjust the goggles. The gloves will also kind of fit, which is more than he could say if he grabbed Jo's shit, like he kind of wants to.

There hasn't been a lot to laugh about lately. He could use a good snicker.

Colt's room is empty. It's been empty for a month, but now it's shiny spit clean, like someone had decided that nobody was coming back. John's stuff is still on the wall, though, so Dean concentrates on that instead of his desire to go fuck someone's shit up.

It's not even set up like Colt likes it anymore. There's no straw on the ground for her to methodically shred when she's bored. It's creepy.

Kind of like standing in a funeral parlor, Dean decides, and gets his ass in gear.

Impala has Sam completely leaning against her side by the time Dean gets back. He stands in the doorway for a long minute, raising an eyebrow, because Sam's always been pretty damn vocal about the dragons just being pieces of machinery.

The way he's laughing sets Dean's heart at ease and gives him the courage to throw the goggles at his baby brother's face.

Sam needs to learn, Dean reminds himself. He curls his mouth in a pointed smirk when the goggles slap Sam in the cheek and fall into his lap with a clatter. "Getting a little rusty there, kiddo," he says obnoxiously. There was a time Sam could have caught that without looking.

"Shut up," Sam says fondly and then realizes what he's got. "Dude, what the hell?"

"We're going riding, Sammy," Dean croons. Impala's entire body perks up, her wings mantling wide before she heaves herself to her feet.

Sam's face screws up. "Are you high?"

"Nope," Dean says, and ain't that a shame. This whole shitfest would be so much easier if he'd taken a hit of Cas's stash beforehand. It'd make flying miserable, though. He's never figured out how Castiel manages to pilot Thursday and come back when the guy's either high or drunk all the damn time.

"Then what the hell makes you think I'm getting on a dragon?" Impala chuckles and leans over to muss Sam's hair with the bottom of her chin. "No offense," Sam adds grudgingly.

"None taken."

"Come on, Sammy, I double dog dare you." Dean throws the heavy gloves up into the air and grins as wide and stupidly as possible. He needs Sam to do this.

"I'm not an Airman," Sam snaps, "I don't need to know how to ride her."

Dean just looks at him for a long minute. Sam's not stupid; Sam's never been freakin' stupid. Dragons are metal and magic but they're also blood too. Impala's always going to be Dean's lady, but when Dean's luck eventually runs out, she's going to need a new rider.

Metal and magic'll make it so she gets back. Blood's gonna get her in the air again.

Jo's the only one Harvelle would even glance at after Bill went down. Colt hates Sam for some reason, but Impala coos when the kid gets anywhere near her and that? That's good enough for Dean. Someone's gotta take care of his baby when he dies and Impala'll keep Sam safe.

"Suck it up, bitch," he says when the silence has stretched into really freakin' awkward. "You're learning."

Especially if Dean's going to do something as stupid as he's planning. He needs to make sure both of his girls are taken care of. That reminds him... "Dude, get a haircut, seriously," he needles, "You're starting to look like a pretty princess."

Sam bats his eyelashes. "Ah, I'm glad you think I'm pretty, Dean," he says, "I'll remember that."

"Prettiest little princess I've ever seen," Dean affirms and decides the gloves are heavy enough that he can peg Sam with those too. "Get dressed, princess. I'm not taking no for an answer."

"And I'm not doing it."

Dean raises both eyebrows and smirks. "Triple. Dog. Dare," he says, waggly his eyebrows.

Sam's face pulls up sulkily. He stares down at his hands for a long moment, but Dean knows his little brother. He taps his foot and exchanges an amused look with Impala because they so have him now. Sam's getting on.

"Best two out of three?" Sam suggests hopelessly.

Dean sucks on his teeth. "Sure, Sammy," he says, "If you're too much of a chicken to man up to a dare, I'll play kiddie games with you."

"You are such a dick," Sam says with feeling, and snaps the goggles onto his face.

"You put those on wrong," Dean says helpfully.

Sam's face flushes and Dean has a minute of feeling like an awesome big brother who totally knows how to show his kid brother shit, then Impala says, "Dean wore them the wrong way for two months before he figured it out."

Sympathetically.

"You, sweetheart, are a total raving bitch," Dean tells her.

She stretches out languidly. "I learned from the best, sweetheart."

Dean cuffs her fondly on the shoulder and reaches out to help untangle the goggle straps from Sam's stupid hair. "I told you it was too long," he says pragmatically.

Sam swats his hands away and does it himself. "I hate you," he says.

"I know you do." Dean smirks.

It's not a mistake. But it feels like one.

It's second nature for Dean to put on his leather jacket, the goggles, and the gloves at this point. He's been doing it for four years. Impala heckles him the entire time, saying shit like, "And here I thought you were a quick draw," and "Dean, I'm starting to rust over here." 

Dean spins around when he's done and raises his eyebrows at his girl. "Ta-da," he says dryly. 

"I'm thoroughly impressed," Sam says dryly. 

Considering his goggles are still on wrong, Dean doesn't think he's got a leg to stand on. "Fix your goggles, Francis," he says. 

It's no skin off his nose if Sam wants to bruise the fuck out of his face by wearing the goggles that way, but he wants Sam to like this. He wants Sam to want to do it again. 

Sam curses softly under his breath and pulls the goggles off again. "This shouldn't be rocket science," he grumbles. 

"It's not," Dean points out. He snatches the goggle's from Sam's hands and snaps them on right. They go on quietly and Sam's hair sticks up stupidly around the strap, all fluffy and hilarious like one of those ridiculous little dogs Charlotte ladies like to cart around. 

He stifles a snort behind one of his gloves. 

"Shut up," Sam says and tugs his own gloves on. 

Impala holds her wing out of the way when Dean slides into place. He stops for a long second, contemplating logistics, but his baby's never been what anyone would call small and there's plenty of room behind him. If Sam's willing to get a little cosy. 

He'd just better not shoot up another damn foot, is all Dean's saying. 

"Hop on," Dean says, extending a hand. 

Sam gives a dubious look and then shifts around to face Impala. She's already strafing the ground with her claws, eager as fuck to get out after having been kept from rotations for a friggin' month. "You sure you can handle both of us?" he asks. 

Impala snorts. "I promise your ass isn't going to break me, Sammy," she says and flicks him gently on the shoulder with the tip of her wing. 

"Stop procrastinating," Dean says. He reaches out, manages to grab Sam's hand even though stupid Sam rears back like Dean's going to punch him or something, and just pulls. Sam's chest bumps against his knee before he hits the wall of Impala's body and then he's clambering up her side about as ungracefully as he possibly can. 

"I just want you to know that I am totally keeping my comments to myself right now," Dean says. 

Sam shifts around behind him and Dean remembers that part too. It takes a while to get used to mushing your family jewels against something cold and ungiving. Way worse than travel by horseback. "I hate you so much," Sam says again because he's a broken record. 

"Bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch," Dean says, reaching for the reins. 

They're attached to Impala's mouth through a complicated system of hooks and gears, metal links fused to her mouth so that Dean can never lose them. They turn to leather where Dean's expected to grab them; over the years they've worn down to butter softness. 

"You're gonna want to grab on to me," Dean informs Sam. "I promise I'm not going to mistake you for a hot girl." 

"You do think I'm a pretty princess." Sam's arms clamp around his waist as he leans forward into him. 

Whoa, that was a little closer than Dean was strictly comfortable with. He shifts on Impala's back and kicks absently at the top of Sam's boot when it tries to go for his stirrup. "That's mine," he says, "You're just gonna have to deal with your legs dangling." 

"This is such a bad idea," Sam says. 

Dean taps his heel against Impala's chest. "You ready, sweetheart?" 

"I was born ready, Dean," she says and then they're pushing off, Sam's hands are clamping down so hard that Dean's a little scared he's going to lose feeling in the bottom half of his body, and the open air is rushing up to meet them.

* * *

Dean's been able to talk Sam into a lot of stupid shit in their lives. There was that time where they almost burned down the abandoned building across the street playing with fireworks and that's only one stupid moment in a long line of stupid moments.

Getting on the back of a dragon because his big brother dares him to? That's got to take the cake.

Sam holds on tighter with his arms and legs, aware he's being ridiculous and not particularly caring. Dean's not going to let him fall and he's pretty sure Impala would rather chew her own wings off, but that doesn't make him feel any better.

"I'm not going to drop you," Impala yells.

Sam squeezes tighter with his legs, to the point where he can feel metal cutting off his circulation. "That's actually not making me feel any better," he yells into the wind.

Dean tilts his head away from his mouth and shoots a grimace over his shoulder. "Dude," he says, "Do not freakin' yell into my ear. I can hear you just fine."

For a second, Sam's actually kind of embarrassed. Then he remembers that he's up in the clouds with nothing between him and certain death but five tons of metal and some magic and his brother, and he clamps ruthlessly down on both of them.

His brother's never let him fall in his life, but there's a first time for everything.

He can actually feel the rumble of Impala's laughter through his thighs and that's the disconcerting cherry on top of this craptastic pie. Sam leans forward to put his mouth right next to his brother's ear. "Please tell me you've never jerked off on the dragon," he says.

He squeezes his eyes shut when Dean banks abruptly into a cloud and starts to howl like a loon.

"I would corrode," Impala says indignantly. "The salt would eat through my metal!"

He can feel Dean's head tilts back; Sam obligingly tilts his head forward so he can hear better. "Didn't know your mind was such a filthy place, Sammy," Dean says.

It's not, usually, but Sam is really fucking disconcerted right now. He chances opening his eyes and looks down to see the sea stretching beneath them, sails dotting the water. His stomach does an uncomfortable lurch.

Sam clamps both his mouth and his eyes shut. "I'm going to hurl," he informs both Dean and Impala.

"Stomach acid is fine," Impala says, "Provided you clean it off as soon as we land."

Sam's mind immediately latches onto that like it's a lifeline. "How is stomach acid any better than semen?" he blurts.

"Dude, you are seriously fixating," Dean says. "Control your OCD and pay attention."

Sam wants to say that he doesn't want to pay attention. That's the whole point of trying to distract himself with thinking. "I'm just curious," he says. He flicks open one eye again and stares resolutely up at the sky instead of down below.

Not so bad if he's looking up instead of down.

"It's less disgusting," Impala says. "One of them is involuntary. The other is a conscious choice. Also, I would throw Dean off my back if I heard him unzipping his pants."

"No you wouldn't," Dean says.

"If you splattered come on me, you bet your ass I'd drop you off in a heartbeat," Impala says.

Sam unwinds enough to laugh breathlessly, still staring out at the sky. It's blue. And big. And it has clouds in it. That's what Sam's concentrating on, not the whirl of Impala's wings as she pumps them through it and definitely not on the fact that she should be too damn heavy to be flying anyway.

Physics don't mean much in the face of magic. Sam's known this intellectually for years, but he still hates how much the dragons flaunt it.

"Now you're fixating, babe," Dean says lightly and taps one of Sam's hands.

Sam starts. If Dean's tapping him, that means he's let go of the reins. Sam's hands tighten around his brother's waist in horrified reaction; that means Dean's hanging on with one hand. While piloting a dragon.

There is so much wrong with his life right now that Sam can't even articulate it.

"Are you payin' attention, Sammy?" Dean asks.

"I'm trying not to."

"Wuss."

Sam pinches Dean's belly while still maintaining a death grip. "Shut up," he mutters darkly and then has to squeeze his eyes closed again when Dean flips Impala in a showy maneuver Sam's seen from the ground a thousand times.

* * *

By the time Colt's cleared for flying again, Sam's graduated from clinging to Dean's back like the pretty princess he is and he's actually flying her with some degree of confidence. It's a friggin' miracle because Sam is kind of useless in the air.

Dean's honestly surprised at how much Sam hates being up there. It's always felt like freedom to Dean. Sam likes freedom; that's why he left, right? So he should like flying Impala.

Only he doesn't.

"You don't want to be leaning over that far," Dean warns and yanks Sam back onto the center of Impala's back.

"I got it, Dean," Sam says.

Sure he does. They've been flying Impala every couple of days for a month now and Sam's still liable to fly off her if Dean isn't holding on. Impala hasn't even done any of her shitty, bitchy shit since the first week, when they actually lost Sam for a good thirty feet before they managed to catch him again.

It'd taken him a few days to quit shakin' after that and Impala had been equally horrified. Sam? Sam had just sighed like he knew this kind of shit was going to happen to him.

At least Sam's landings have gotten better. Or Dean thinks they have. Impala won't tell him if Sam's doing anything other than sitting on her back like a sack of potatoes, though, so he's not a hundred percent sure. It's fine. As long as Impala's lookin' out for Sam, everything's fine.

That's what he keeps telling himself anyway. He's got a date with Colt today.

"You're getting better," he tells Sam as they dismount. He keeps a hand on Impala's shoulder to let his legs have a minute to figure out that they do, in fact, need to support his weight. "I hardly needed to catch you that time."

Sam rubs Impala's nose absently while he snaps his goggles off. "Dude, spare me," he says, "There's a reason I don't want to be a Hunter." He cuts his eyes over to Dean, the meaning clear.

He's doing it for Dean. That'd make something fuzzy and warm bloom in Dean's chest, if it wasn't such a giant sucking hole of 'it's been two months, I don't think anyone can last through two months of Ke-Han torture.'

"You could work a little harder at keeping your hands on the reins," Impala offers, "I know I seem like a control freak, but some indication of what you want would be appreciated."

"I liked you better when you were nicer to me," Sam tells her and taps her muzzle hard enough to hear the dull thud of flesh meeting metal.

Dean scrubs his face with one hand. "You're not keeping your hands on the reins? Jesus Christ, Sam, I take it all back. You're shit at this."

"And you can't study to save your life." Sam pulls his gloves off and adds them to the goggles in his free hand. "You don't hear me calling you a moron everytime you forget what a two syllable word means."

Dean points a finger at him and says, "You are a friggin' filthy lying little shit, Sammy."

His brother grins brightly at him.

Dean's chest aches again, but he just pulls all of his equipment off and drops it on the floor. Someone'll be by to clean it up sooner or later. "I've got shit I need to do," he says to Sam's raised eyebrows.

Impala makes a choking, disapproving cluck. Dean's not sure how she does it, considering she doesn't even have a tongue.

"Smooth way to get rid of me, man," Sam notes.

Dean shrugs his shoulders pointedly. "You can hang out with Impala if you want, kiddo, but I gotta book it. I'll see you the day after tomorrow, alright?"

He's striding away before Sam can answer him, closing the door to Impala's stable as quickly as he can. Colt's room is actually on the far side of the stables, so he sets out that way, passing Paradise Lost and Thursday on the way. Harvelle's out flying, same as him and Sam were, and Jo'd thrown her hair into the wind and laughed as Sam almost fell off again.

Colt's room has a bunch of scurrying stable hands going in and out, but they wave him through when they see him. He's pretty sure everyone's been expecting him for quite a while.

"Hey, girl," he says, nice and easy, when he sees her.

For a second, he thinks something's just off about the angle of her scales and the spread of her wings. He can't pinpoint it down though, so he shrugs it off and smirks when her head comes around to stare at him with on brilliant blue eye.

That gives him pause. Colt had been red chalcedony and reinforced bronze to Impala's malachite and steel. Now she's got blue in her eyes and her gears are obviously not bronze. It's like they had to pull her apart before they fixed her.

"I like the new eyes," he finally says, "Very... blue."

"You're Dean," says Colt. Her head tilts slightly to the right so that she can regard him better out of one of those creepy blue eyes. "Where's your brother?"

One of Dean's eyebrows kick up, pretty much by itself. "You're asking about Sammy? Seriously, you hate the kid."

"I've had a change of heart." Colt's wings mantle out with a screech of metal on metal. Something's wrong with the way they've put her back together if she can do that, but, whatever. they'll still be doing repairs for a couple more days, at least, and someone's going to notice if she doesn't fly straight.

"You are a lying bitch," Dean says fondly.

"It can happen," Colt says even though Dean's pretty sure both of them know it can't. The dragons are static. They aren't meant to change, not after their personalities start to assert themselves. Colt's hated Sam for ten years. She's not just going to stop.

"You just want to eat his face off, admit it." Dean pushes himself off the door jamb and strides in.

Colt pulls her head back on her neck like a snake and hisses like a tea kettle. "Don't do that," she finally says. "I want to see Sam."

"Are you serious?" Dean demands.

"As a heart attack," she says. "You want to know about John, don't you? I want to see Sam."

Her blue eyes really are creepy as fuck, Dean thinks."I don't think so," Dean says.

Colt closes her eyes and turns her face away from him. "Then get out of here, Dean," she says, "I don't want to see you."

Dean swallows hard. On the one hand, she says she has information on Dad. On the other hand, she tried to hurt Sam the last time Sam was anywhere near her. Sam for Dad? He can't do it. He can't. "You do what you gotta do," he mutters finally.

"Out, Dean," she says. It's almost gentle which freaks him out about as much as her wanting to see Sam.

"Colt--" Dean tries.

"I'm not talking to you without Sam," she says.

Dean leaves. He tells himself that he's not going to put his brother in danger to get something out of this cranky dragon. He tells himself that his Dad wouldn't want that, that everything's always been about keeping their family safe.

And then he runs a hand down his face and goes to get Impala because he's a liar to everyone, including himself, and he already knows just how his resolve is going to go.

He needs to figure out how to get Impala and Colt in the same stable so that they'll at least be something to shield Sam behind when the damn dragon inevitably decides she wants to claw Sam's face off.

* * *

"For the record," Sam says, adjusting himself on Impala, "I think this might be the stupidest thing we've done in a long, storied history of doing stupid things."

He feels Dean shrugs behind him and then his brother's mouth is at his ear while he says, "Really? Stupider than that time we decided to steal the Prosecutor's purse?"

Sam has to give him credit for bringing that up. He's pretty sure they'd have both lost their hands back then if Dad hadn't shown up and made a big deal about being a Hunter. "Maybe not that stupid." Sam turns his head to share a rueful smile with his brother before he nudges Impala to the left with one leg. "But it's still a pretty epic amount of stupidity going on right now, Dean."

Dean shrugs again and corrects Sam's seat almost before Sam realizes that he's overbalanced himself pushing Impala where he wants her to go. He's never going to get used to this.

"It's a smart idea," Impala weighs in.

"You just like it because it means you're in the middle of it." Sam's discovered that for a dragon, she's nosy as fuck when it comes to him or Dean.

"That's only part of it," she says and subtly tilts her head sideways to correct for the death grip Sam knows he has on her mouth. "I just think it's a solid idea, even if it came out of Dean's head."

Dean huffs in his ear and mutters something that's probably derogatory and fond. Sam doesn't bother trying to pick out the individual words. They're not as important as the tone.

"It's better if I'm there," Impala says.

"You're both just worried she's going to take my face off," Sam says. He deliberately pitches his voice loud enough that Dean can hear him over the roaring of the wind in their ears.

This is a really stupid plan.

"I'm not gonna let anything happen to you," Dean growls into his ear, then, "She's not gonna let anything happen to you either, are you sweetheart?"

"Now that I'm deaf..." Sam says.

Impala rumbles under him and wheels obediently towards the stables again. "I won't let her hurt you," she says.

"I know." Sam risks letting go of the reins long enough to pat her on the side of the neck.

He's just really, really hoping one of them can keep their promise, because he has a feeling his Dad's bitch of a dragon is going to put herself between the exits and Sam. He likes his face where it is, thanks. At least she can't breathe fire without a rider on her back.

"You wanna give me the reins for this, Sammy?" Dean asks.

It's not really a question, so Sam clamps down with his thighs and takes a deep breath. He pulls the reins against his stomach, holds still while his brother gropes his belly in search of them, and then lets Dean take them from him so he can clutch at the scales on the base of Impala's neck.

His hands are sweaty slick inside of the gloves, but that doesn't mean anything. He's not going to get much of a grip either way, but it always makes him feel better.

Dean's arms are pressed tightly against his sides as he flicks his wrists and gets Impala to turn just enough that they make the entrance with room to spare. If Sam had been flying, chances are one of Impala's wings would have clipped the wall.

If she'd bothered to listen to him in the first place, which Sam's kind of relieved to find out that she doesn't do most of the time.

Colt's a sleek shape made of metal when they come to a stop on the stable floor. There's something... off about her, though. Something not quite right and Sam's heart lurches unexpectedly in his chest.

No visions fling into his vision though and that's. That's just as odd as Colt is.

"Sam," she croons.

Sam keeps his ass firmly parked on Impala's back as Dean slides down off of her. "Don't do that," his brother says, "It's creepy as all hell, girl."

The dragon ignores Dean and tilts her head to focus an eye on Sam. It's blue and Sam's mind flashes on the vision he had a long time ago, something the yellow-eyed magician had in the sand, and he twitches. "It's good to see you again, Sam," she says.

"Can't say I feel the same way," Sam manages.

One of Impala's forelimbs comes up to nudge Sam so that the backs of his knees are snugged up tight to her wing joints; the gears click against the fabric of his jeans. "Hello, Colt," she says.

"And now that we've got intros out of the way," Dean says leadingly, "Hi. I brought Sam. Start talking, bitch."

Colt yawns her mouth open wide and sighs. "You really do have no manners, do you Dean? I'm glad you're not my rider."

"No, but I do really want to know where the hell Dad is."

"I don't remember," Colt says.

Sam narrows his eyes at her. "You're lying," he says. He knows it's true. He doesn't know how he knows it's true, but he does.

"I'll never lie to you, Sam," says Colt. "You should know that coming into this partnership."

For a long, long moment, Sam's struck dumb. He's pretty sure Dean and Impala are feeling the same thing, because neither one of them moves.

"What?" Dean manages.

"My rider," Colt purrs, "You're going to be my rider, Sam."

Sam pulls his head back in an automatic jerk of denial. "Like hell," he says pleasantly, and means it.

"You're change your mind," says Colt, "You won't be able to help it. You'll see."

Dean's eyes are the size of saucer plates when Sam holds out his hand. He takes Sam's hand anyway and lets Sam haul him up. Sam keeps eye contact with Colt the whole time as Impala backs away.

The go over the precipice of the stable room backwards, but Dean's got the reins and Sam trusts his brother. He lets himself have a moment where he's got his arms tight around his brother's waist and his cheek is on Dean's back.

When Sam says no, he means it.

Unfortunately, that means absolutely nothing in face of Th'Esar.

* * *

Predictably, Dean finds his brother curled up against Impala's side. He can't really say anything about that, though, because for all that she's just a hunk of metal, Dean's slept under her forearms a time or two.

She'd stepped on him in the morning, of course, but that was just her way of saying she cared. He's pretty sure she'd never stoop so low as to stomp on Sam's dick and cheerfully claim it was an accident, but there's a first time for everything.

"You're in a sorry state," Dean tells Sam.

Sam doesn't even lift his head from his knees. Sulky little bitch. "Go away, Dean," he mutters.

"Dude, aren't you too old to throw temper tantrums?" Dean asks. He's genuinely curious. He figures twenty-two is old enough, but he kind of remembers himself at twenty-two.

That hadn't been a good year. Impala had cracked his head more than once with one of her wings to get him to stop making threats against the poor stable hands.

"I'm not throwing a temper tantrum," Sam snaps, "And even if I was, Dean, don't you think it's warranted? I never wanted this from my life."

Dean shrugs his shoulders like he hadn't just come from embarrassing the shit out of himself by begging Th'Esar to reconsider. "Suck it up," he advises, "No use crying over spilt milk now is there?"

Sam pointedly turns his head towards Impala's side and away from him. She's pretending to be sleeping since she hasn't butted in yet. Dean's not sure she knows that they all know she doesn't sleep, but he lets her pretend when she wants to.

"It's not so bad, is it, Sammy?" Dean asks helplessly.

This isn't what he wanted for his kid brother, but he can't really change this. It's not something that he can just snap his fingers and fix, you know? He's going to make sure Sam's the best damn Hunter that's ever lived in the Quarters and he's never gonna be allowed out by himself, but they can do this.

As long as Colt's not just being a total bitch and making life difficult because she hates Sam and suddenly decided to get cute about it.

"Dean," Sam says clearly, even through his knees and his girly hair, "I left you guys because I didn't want to do this with my life. I wanted to learn. I wanted..."

You wanted to be safe, Dean thinks, which is the only reason I never came after you. It's easier to forgive Sammy for that now that Dad's gone and the driving force behind 'my way or the highway' is missing. "We don't always get what we want, kiddo," Dean says.

He leans forward so that he can check on the gears in Impala's wings and deliberately nudges Sam's toes with his boot in solidarity. If there had been any way out of this, Dean would have found it. "Shouldn't you be gettin' to know your dragon instead of stealing mine?" he asks.

Sam shrugs. "Figured you didn't want me taking Impala over there without you," he says; he's dead wrong, actually. Impala's an extension of Dean at this point. He trusts her to look after Sam.

"You could have just walked down the hall."

That finally gets Sam to look up at him. They're really going to have to cut those bangs if Sam's going to take part in raids at all, Dean thinks, and tries to push away the reflexive surge of panic that thought brings.

"Yeah," Sam says, "Because you totally wouldn't have flipped your shit if I'd gone over there without you."

"Dude, I do realize you're technically an adult, even if you do look like a thirteen year old girl."

Sam gives him a highly skeptical look that Dean has to shrug to. "Yeah," he says flatly, "You would have been okay with it."

"Totally fine," Dean mutters darkly.

Impala gives a gusty laugh. They both pause to see if she's going to stop pretending to be asleep, but she doesn't do anything at all after that, just lays there like she's not a fucking huge animated metal dragon, so Dean looks back at his brother and grins.

"Passing gas there, Sammy?"

Sam rolls his eyes. "You're a dick," he pronounces gleefully and stretches out his legs in front of him. "I went and saw Colt this morning anyway."

Oh, Dean's going to kill the little fucker. "Alone?" he asks carefully.

His brother nods.

"What the hell were you thinking?" Dean demands.

Sam grins, sudden and bright, and says, "No, you're totally okay with me going to see 'my' dragon by myself."

Dean makes a mental note to tell the little bitch how very gay the air quotes make him look just as soon as he's done kicking him in the guts. Sam catches his boot, though, and pushes it away with a laugh that Impala echoes like the world's worst canyon.

"Seriously, man, I'm going to have to go see her by myself eventually," Sam says.

"You don't even want the damn dragon," Dean points out.

There's a slight pause while Sam gathers his legs under him so he can push himself up. "Two minutes ago you were telling me that I needed to shut up and do what needs to be done," he says.

"Yeah, well." Dean scrubs the back of his head with one hand and tries to sort out his own feelings. "Maybe you should give her a couple of days to settle in before you go over there again, huh? See if she changes her mind."

Sam rolls his eyes again. "Dragons don't really change, Dean," he points out.

That's what's been on Dean's mind for the last few days. It's true. Dragons don't change. They can't. They aren't people, they don't really react past an initial examination of their surroundings. They aren't guileful, they aren't capable of lying or tricking people.

Colt should still hate Sam.

It's seriously creeping Dean's shit out that she doesn't.

Dean shakes the thoughts off. He's not sure if the repairs have anything to do with it. He's hoping that's what's wrong with her, but...

"We going riding today?" he asks instead of voicing anything inside his head.

Impala finally hauls herself upright, nudging Sam and Dean back with a foreclaw. "I thought you'd never ask," she says, "You seriously need to cut back on your chick flick moments, Dean. Are you a twelve year old little girl?"

"Shut your mouth," Dean says and thanks God that his dragon is easy to understand.

* * *

Sam's never had a vision while he was flying. He's not sure if that's because his body instinctively knows that it'll kill him if he can't see what the fuck he's doing or if that section of his brain just shuts down because he's in the sky and who needs more problems when that's happening.

There's always that feeling, though, like he could make one happen if he pushed hard enough or stared down at Impala for too long. It's why he focuses on the sky or the ground and not the dragon he's steering. It's also why he tends to tie his hands into the reins when he's driving; he'll take a broken wrist if it means he's not going to fall off the dragon if his head decides it hates him.

Also, he's pretty damn sure at this point that Impala is just humoring him whenever Dean gives him the reins. He's strangely okay with this.

"We need to go left," Sam informs her quietly, leaning forward even though he still has no earthly idea where her ears are, or if she even has ears. He knows she doesn't have a tongue and she can still talk.

"I know," Impala says.

"What?" Dean yells in his ear.

Sam shrugs the shoulder Dean's using as a chin rest and vindictively hopes his brother gets crick in his neck from having to tilt his head up to do it. "Nothing," he says, "Not important."

He doesn't want to see Colt. He really, really doesn't want to see Colt.

He needs to do it anyway, and he needs to do it without his stupid brother hanging over his shoulder. There's something weird about the dragon and it's something more than just her eyes and her shiny new silver gears.

The eyes bother him a lot, though, he's not going to lie.

* * *

"Hi, Sammy," Colt says without opening her eyes.

Sam tilts his head back and says, "Dean's the only one who gets to call me that," before he thinks that it might not be too smart to deliver ultimatums when he doesn't have a crusher dragon backing him up.

Colt just chuckles. It vibrates hard enough that Sam can feel it in his own chest, almost like a double echo, and then she's opening her eyes to regard him with those creepy, milky pale blue stones. Something hits him low and hard in his stomach and he shudders for a second, looking at her.

He understands why the magicians used semi-precious stones as eyes; something about focuses for all the magic. The gemstones had been personal choice on the magicians part, which left them with weird personality mishmashes like Rufus riding a pink-eyed dragon and taking flak for being a closet girl.

Still, something's not right about Colt's eyes. They used to be jasper. He doesn't know what they are now. Blue's a long way from red, though, and he kind of wonders what the magician who repaired her was thinking to go make a ninety degree turn on the color wheel.

"What'd they replace your eyes with?" Sam settles on asking.

"Hemimorphite," Colt purrs.

Sam isn't up to date on his thermo theory, so he just nods his head and makes a note to research it later. "Why?"

"They thought it would be... appropriate, for us," says Colt.

"For you and Dad?" Sam tries to clarify.

Colt stretches out of her curl, reaches out, and touches his shoulder with one of her claws. "For you and I," Colt says. "We were made for each other, Sam."

"You're my Dad's dragon," Sam stresses, stepping away from her. He's already almost pressed to the doorjamb, though, and he's really go no place to go. The wind whipping through the opening to the sky is cold and kind of wet; Impala had been slick with precipitation when they'd gotten her back to the stables a couple of hours ago.

"No, I'm not," says Colt. She tilts her head and asks, "What do you see when you look at me, Sam?"

Sam sees a dragon, he thinks. She's metal, stone, and magic, and something about her makes Sam's heart flutter like it's trying to escape. He wants to touch her, which is why he's staying as far away from her as he possibly can.

Something's not right.

"I see a dragon," Sam says finally. "My dad's dragon."

Colt deliberately mantles her wings with a screech of metal. "No," she says, quiet enough that it’s almost lost in the ringing of Sam's ears. "Not with your eyes, Sam. What do you see when you look at me?"

For a long second, Sam doesn't know what the hell she's talking about. He has to use his eyes to see, right? And then it hits him and he sucks in a breath.

They'd never told Colt about his Talent. She shouldn't know.

"I don't see anything," Sam says. His hands clench at his sides.

"I know." She twists herself until her belly is pressed against the ground and she can rest her head on her forelimbs. A lick of smoke escapes from the side of her mouth as the quiet click of gears echos in Sam's head. "You won't ever have visions around me, Sam. Not even if you try."

Sam stares at her long enough that she starts to blur and then has to blink his eyes a few times, hard. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"I won't tell Th'Esar," Colt says. "You're mine. You've always been mine. You don't belong to anyone but me."

"You don't even like me!" Sam blurts out.

Colt's tail flicks once, twice, and then curls around her like she's a large metal cat. "There's never been a minute where I wasn't thinking about you," she says.

Sam can tell it's meant to be reassuring, but it comes out insanely creepy. His hand finds the doorknob and he's turning it before he can think about it to hard because seriously, what the hell. "You're my dad's dragon," Sam stresses like he can talk logic into her if he just tries hard enough. "You tried to kill me the first time we met."

He's not sure how a dragon manages to look affronted, but she does. "I've never tried to hurt you," she says, "I won't hurt you, Sam."

The doorknob suddenly feels clammy in his hand. Is it possible for the magicians to drive the dragons insane?

"If you think about it long enough, I'm sure you'll understand," Colt says. Her eyes close again and Sam can suddenly breathe. A weight he hadn't even noticed settles back into his chest, like talking with Colt or staring at her had taken something from him.

Sam gives her one last distrustful look and leaves without turning his back on her.

* * *

He goes to his dorm and he thinks about it. He looks up hemimorphite and stares at the page, at the description, and then he lies awake all night thinking about it.

The next morning, he skips classes and slinks into Colt's room as soon as the sun's up.

He stands in the doorway for a long moment before he swallows hard and asks, "What's your name?"

It's the only thing he can think of, the only thing that makes sense even though it makes no sense at all. Colt had hated him. Colt had tried to kill him.

The dragon stretches, long and luxurious, all clean metal lines interrupted by the curve of her wings. "Lucifer," she says, and Sam suddenly knows that she isn't a she at all.

The only logical reason for Colt to change her mind about Sam is for this not to be Colt. For the dragon to be different, and she'd been gone for a month before they found her. Gone for a month and poorly guarded, not even a full Ke-Han wizard in the bunch that ended up dead.

"Breathe, Sam," Lucifer says.

Sam inhales sharply. "Oh," he says, swallowing again.


	3. When

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So these are the unfinished bits. Basically, it was all an excuse to have Sam creepy bonding with a metal dragon and I regret everything in my life that led me to this point.
> 
> I keep telling myself I'll play in this sandbox again someday, but please for the love of god don't hold your breath.

There's a motherfucking dragon in the air with him and it's not one of theirs. She's gaudy and bright, whore red with muted gold gears flashing in her wings, and that's pretty much all Dean has time to see before the little bitch rams him and he's too busy trying to stay on Impala to give a flying fuck about it.

"Jesus Christ," Impala hisses.

The other dragon shrills brassy laughter at him.

Something hits him from the other side before he can get Impala flying straight again. She curses viciously as he wrenches her around and pulls down on her mouth, but the spurt of flames hits nothing but air.

"Come on," Dean screams over the sound of Impala's beating wings.

There's the sound of dragon laughter again, high and bright and metallic, before Impala screams in rage. Colt goes winging past him like a bat out of hell. Dean's too busy trying to compensate for the sudden flutter in Impala's left side to really take that in.

* * *

Flying Impala is a lot like riding a horse for Sam. Logically, he knows that there's enough power and strength between his legs to crush him flat, but logistically, all he has to do is point in a direction and let her do the rest. He's never understood Dean's obsession with her.

Lucifer goes screaming up into the air and Sam feels it in his bones. The dragon laughs and it rumbles up through his legs until he realizes that he's laughing too and then they're banking into the clouds and one of them says, "Let's get to work."

* * *

The next time the air clears enough for Dean to see, he has a moment to revel in the sheer goddamn _what the fuck_ that is seeing Sam on Colt.

Impala roars, wings buffeting ash and smoke away. "What the fuck are you doing up here?" she screams.

Colt flicks his tail at her; Dean's seen enough dragons fly to know when one's being a little shit and pretending like they can't hear you. Sam doesn't even turn his head and he knows that little bitch heard. Impala's loud enough to fucking shake the buildings if she feels like it, certainly loud enough to hear over Ke-Han magic.

The red and gold dragon slides between them. It's huge, big enough to catch Impala in its wake and send her spinning away. Its rider throws back their head in a clear laugh and Dean starts swearing under his breath, hands tugging hard on Impala's reins to try to get the bitch back with fire.

Sam's foot snaps out like he's on the ground instead of a hundred feet up, catches the rider in the chin just as Colt snaps her jaws closed on the dragon's wing and pulls. Metal shears off with a sound loud enough to be heard over the din of screaming humanity below them.

Rider and dragon both plummet like stones.

Sam doesn't even stop to watch, already wheeling away with a jerk of Colt's reins. Dean has to stop watching because he's never seen a dragon bank like that, not even Impala when she's feeling frisky, and thinks that it's time he started making his own kills.

He's not gonna let his little brother outshine him.

* * *

Sam stumbles off Lucifer. His legs feel like they've been turned into water and his arms are screaming at him, but Lucifer nudges his head under Sam's shoulder before he can fall flat on his face like a newbie.

"I've got you, Sammy," he croons.

Sam can't remember anything after climbing onto Lucifer last night. There's weak grey light filtering into the keep, though, and ash in his hair. "We went on a raid?" he asks faintly.

Lucifer hums. "I told you Sam," he says, "We were made for this. We'll bring this world to its knees."

"Shut up," Sam says tiredly.

* * *

"You're not Colt," Dean says.

The dragon swings her head up and back to sigh. It echoes weirdly, even for a dragon, like there's something else in her chest besides her soul. "No, Dean," she says, "I'm not."

And, okay, logically, Dean knows that for months Sam's been saying that what they brought back isn't Colt, but dragons don't change. They can't. They're not freakin' people, they don't just evolve new personalities because they lose their rider, so Sam had to have been imagining things.

"You should listen to your brother more," the dragon says.

"I'll do whatever I freakin' want with him," Dean bristles. "Who the hell are you?"

"Me? I'm Sam's. Or he's mine, we're actually not very clear on that point." She settles back onto her haunches for a second before her wings flare wide and her mouth lolls open. "We were made for each other. Every bone, chassis, and drop of blood between us."

That... sounds kind of really freaky. "You're a good thirteen years younger than Sam is," Dean points out.

She laughs, mouth still gaping open. She has teeth, Dean realizes abruptly. The other dragons don't; there's no point in wasting the metal on something that's just for show. Why would a motherfucking magical dragon need teeth?

"Colt was," she says, and, "How sure are you that what you brought back was Colt, Dean? After all, they'd been missing for a month." And she fucking winks at him.

"Ke-Han son of a bitch," Dean breathes.

"Now you're getting it," she rasps. The gears in her open mouth click against each other. Further down her throat, Dean can see a spark flicker and die.

She shouldn't fucking be able to do that. The dragons are made so they have to have a rider to do anything important; it's what pisses off the damn Hunter's Council. The springs in her mouth have to be manually depressed for her to breathe fire.

That doesn't stop the gears from slowly turning over with a quiet grind.

"Motherfucker," Dean says, with feeling, and hits the goddamn ground.

* * *

"I'll always choose you, Sam," Lucifer says. His eyes are glowing blue again, but there's a tinge of white through them.

Sam pushes at his eyes. "How do I know you aren't lying?" he asks.

Lucifer's always claimed he'd tell Sam the truth, but he hadn't told him everything. He hadn't told him about his Dad or that he knew, he knew there was something out there that was after Sam.

His dragon purrs and winds itself around him. Sam finds himself reluctantly tucking his face against Lucifer's throat, feeling the hum of magic under his cheek. "That was necessary at the time," Lucifer says. "You weren't ready to know."

"So how do I know you're not keeping something back now?"

Lucifer's teeth are gentle against Sam's throat. "I told you, Sam," he says, "I will always choose you. I'm not going to let Azazel do anything that will harm you."

"And Dean?"

"You'll endanger yourself to save him," Lucifer says. "He puts you in danger. But he also saves you. You'll never forgive yourself if I let him die."

"I'd destroy you," Sam says.

"And in doing so destroy yourself." Lucifer nudges him harder against his chest with one forearm and tightens the teeth he has against Sam's neck. "So you see my dilemma. I can't very well be responsible for you killing yourself, can I, Sam?"

"You could."

"I can't. Blood and magic, Sammy. You were made of blood and magic, sold before you were born to be my other half. I can't let you die."

Sam reaches up and touches Lucifer's chin with his palm. "You could be lying right now," Sam says.

He knows the dragon's not, though. His Talent is dormant inside of him, true, but he knows just the same. Lucifer hasn't lied to him and Sam thinks it's because he can't. They can keep things from each other, but the instant Sam says something, the instant Lucifer says something, it's like there's a little smear across Sam's soul that says, "this is a lie. This is truth."

It's useless.

Sam can't trust the damn dragon. It'd already hurt Dean once. Lucifer might do it again, no matter what he told Sam; promises don't mean anything to something with a magical, created soul.

At heart, Lucifer's nothing but cold metal and pragmatic magic, made to be the perfect killing machine. Sam's his rider, but that all he does is provide the energy for the dragon to kill things with. He's a battery. He's expendable.

"No, you aren't," Lucifer says. He rubs his face against Sam's; it's a rasp of metal scales that takes off the top layer of Sam's skin. "I don't know if there are any better ways to make you understand, Sam. If you die, I'll die. If I die, you'll die. We're linked."

"I survived for years without you," Sam says.

"No," Lucifer says, gently, "You didn't. The process that led to my dragonsoul was started within hours of your conception; my soul was completed with your blood when you were six months old. The rest of this is just draping, curtains to give me a face lift and an easy way in.

"I've been waiting for you for a long time," Lucifer says. "So I came to you, instead of waiting for you to come to me."

* * *

_Some When_

"Twelve little Ke-Han women who wanted so much better for their poor families," the magician says. "Who were willing to do anything at all to get it. What was I supposed to do, Dean, let that opportunity pass me by?

"Your mother, though, she ate that cake and then tried to give me back a pile of shit. Ran away before she lived up to her end of the bargain." The magician taps his nose and smiles. "But the magic always knows, Dean-o. I found her hiding in Thremedon and I made sure I got what I was promised."

Magic and metal and blood, Dean thinks, and looks at his baby brother. "Are you starting to get it?" he asks. "Any fool with a Talent can build a dragon. My dreams were a little more lofty than that."


End file.
